Documenting a Day using Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint - Which is Best?

I created a summary of a day in my life using three different computer applications; I wrote a journal entry using word, I utilized excel to provide a breakdown for my time spent on each daily activity, and I created a presentation about my day using PowerPoint. Each application functions differently and are traditionally used for different purposes. Therefore, each application showcased my day a little differently.

Journal Entry of My Day Using Microsoft Word:

Word is an application that generally uses text. However, it can be formatted to change the look of the text and the features of the document, like alignment and margins. Word processing apps can also insert drawings and images or create bulleted or numbered lists (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). An advantage of using word to summarize a day in my life is that I was able to provide a lot of details about each activity and explain how it leads into the next part of my day. I was able to use formatting to create a bulleted list of tasks that I need to complete to get my children ready for school, which broke up the text. However, using word as an account of a day in my life can be disadvantageous because the summary is a little lengthy and would require the reader to spend more time to understand my day. Word is best used for creating documents that use a lot of text, such as school assignments, resumes, or letters (Sharma, 2023).

Excel Spreadsheet and Graph of My Day:

The second application that I utilized was Excel to build a spreadsheet detailing time spent on daily tasks. While word is usually used for text, spreadsheets are generally used for numbers and data. Per the textbook, a spreadsheet application, like excel, is a “common computer application for representing tables of data like text or numbers, for using formulas to calculate data from other data (like sums or averages), and for creating graphical charts from data” (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). For this application, I created a generalized list of the activities that I did throughout the day in the A column and provided the amount of time spent on that activity in the B column and used a formula to total the amounts of time at the bottom of the B column to equate to 24 hours. I sorted the activities from the ones that took the greatest amount of time to those that took the least. I also created a pie graph depicting the data. An advantage to using excel is that it is very easy to see the tasks and understand the concept of how long each task took. A disadvantage is that there is little to no explanation of each task or even an order in which they were completed. While this is an accurate account of my tasks and the time each took, I do not feel that it offers the best view of my day unless your objective was to simply determine how my time was allotted. Excel is best used for data analysis and other potential uses are budget management, goal planning and tracking progress, and daily planners (Singh, 2022).

PowerPoint Presentation of My Day:

PowerPoint, a presentation app, was the third application used to create a log of my day. Per the text, presentation apps are used to create slideshows utilizing text, graphics, and animation which help the audience to visualize information (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). For this portion of the project, I used a colorful template, headers, photos (my own pictures and stock photos available in PowerPoint), and captions to show the audience a visual representation of my day. An advantage of a PowerPoint presentation to show my day is that it allows the audience to get an idea of my day without having to read too much text or spend too much time analyzing. A possible disadvantage is that it is a lot of work to create and may not provide an extremely detailed description due to size constraints for text (if you use too much text it will be small and difficult to read). PowerPoints are a great tool for presenting information visually and would be very effective for business meetings, school projects, or seminars. 

Conclusion:

I think that the best application for presenting a summary of my day was PowerPoint because it showed a concise summary of my day in a quick and visual manner. However, depending on what your goal was, each application showed my day in a different way. Word gave a lengthy description of each task, excel provided a numerical representation of my schedule with time spent, and PowerPoint used pictures and a smaller amount of text to provide a visual representation. 

References

Sharma, V. K. (2023, February 25). Uses of Microsoft Office applications in Daily Life. Klient Solutech. Retrieved March 13, 2023, from https://www.klientsolutech.com/uses-of-microsoft-office-applications-in-daily- life/

Singh, A. (2022, October 28). The 8 best uses of Excel in daily life. MUO. Retrieved March 13, 2023, from https://www.makeuseof.com/best-uses-of-excel/

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.